One wall of Debbie Travis’s downtown condominium is covered in striking, fuzzy fuschia wallpaper. The low, grey sofas sit atop a shaggy rug with bristles the size of Cheetos. Above a small island in the kitchen hang two lightbulbs that are adorned with what look like homemade wings. (One assumes that no birds were harmed in the making of this light fixture.) The backsplash behind the stove has a subtle fuschia hint that echoes the wallpaper.

This is, in short, a place that looks like it has been decorated by a professional. And why wouldn’t it? Ms. Travis, host of three long-running television shows about design and decor, author of eight best-sellers and a syndicated newspaper column on the subject, expert guest who has wrangled paint chips in the presence of Oprah and Regis, has made as much of a career out of the interior design business as anyone in Canada.

And yet, she offers this assessment of the industry on which her fame was built: “Design is boring. There’s nothing duller than decorating.”

It seems like a stance that is at best counterintuitive and at worst blasphemous. Home accoutrements are huge business, thanks in so small part to shows like those Ms. Travis hosts. Shouldn’t someone with a home decor line to her name — the Debbie Travis Home Collection — kind of, well, like home decor?

“I came here from England, and I couldn’t get a job, so I started the decorating thing, which really a monkey could do. It’s not very difficult to choose a colour. And somehow it all became,” — she trails off a little here, gesturing with her hands to indicate that it became something rather large. It became a design empire. A design empire that came about almost by accident.

Being a designer, she says, or at least being a television host who gives advice on the subject, “is about a confidence level. It’s easier to solve other people’s homes. ‘You’re going to love it!’ ... It’s a snobby subject. It’s silly. It’s got so much hype.”

Where it might be silly to fuss over paint colours for hours, Ms. Travis maintains that decor shows have been a success because they involve people. Put those people in a room, in front of cameras, and now a tedious discussion about paint can become thick with tension.

“That can make a story,” she says. “The act of the renovation and the decorating is the catalyst for the action that makes good television.”

Which brings us to her latest venture, one that she believes makes for very good television, and which she maintains is not really a decor show at all. The show, which airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. on CBC, is All for One with Debbie Travis, in which the host plans a home renovation for someone who is a hero to their community. The twist — and the tension — comes from the use of volunteers who have to pull the task off in a week. Ms. Travis calls it “modern-day barn raising.”

Each episode begins with the hero: a nurse in North Preston, N.S., a youth soccer convenor in Canmore. Alta.

Ms. Travis and crew bundle the hero off on a trip, then spend a week doing a reno with only the aid of volunteers drawn from the community.

“It’s not Extreme Makeover,” she says. “It’s not, ‘You’ve had a bad hand dealt to you, so here’s a new house.’ In Canmore, people would lie down in the street for this guy, but would they help rip out his house?”

“We go in, and the renovation is the catalyst. It’s not about design, it’s not about the colour of the sofa. It’s the catalyst of ‘Will you step up to the plate?’”

She’s not shy about discussing the deeper meaning of the show: the idea that it displays the importance of community.

“It’s not like we can solve severe problems with a new sofa, but we try, through people coming together, to make it better. It was unclear in the beginning what we were doing with this show because we didn’t know what we were going to get. What we got — I never have to do another one. I don’t care, I’m so happy.”

The lofty message is a departure from typical design shows. The explosion of such shows over the past 15 years, where everyone wants to make their home look just so, has naturally proved a boon to the home decor market. One U.S. study says the “home decorative accents” market grew by 72% between 2002 and 2008. And one major U.S. retailer after another has crossed the border to tap into the Canadian market for such things: from Pottery Barn to Restoration Hardware to Crate & Barrel. It’s not for nothing that Canadian Tire now sells ottomans and ornate mirrors next to the crescent wrenches.

But with so much money being spent on the industry, Ms. Travis acknowledges that not everyone necessarily buys into the roll-up-your-sleeves ethos.

“Look, TV shows do everything how-to-ish because you need the footage. You can’t do a television show of walking down to the store and buying something,” she says.

“When I came on the scene, there was nothing. What I did was I made things easy, I made it fun. You need a can of paint and a sponge and a stencil of a duck and — well, maybe I’ve ruined every Canadian home with that one. But if you think of what happened over the last 15 years it became a hobby. It became fun.”

“Anyone can go out and buy a $10,000 sofa,” she says. But what do you need? Why wouldn’t you take old lumber down in your basement and use it for a coffee table? It takes decorating, which is boring, and turns it into a hobby. I do think people get an enormous amount of satisfaction from that.”

In the case of All for One, she says, the satisfaction is amplified by the spirit of helping others. Even if the path can be a bit hairy.

“If you get volunteers who do more damage than good, you’ve got good television, but you also have a problem,” she laughs. “Nobody wants this to be goody-goody. It has a sense of humour, but it’s also very uplifting.”

And, thus, it’s a long way from simply choosing paint colours. Or decor books. Or a stencil of a duck.

“I like to stay ahead of the game,” she says, by way of explanation. “And I like good telly.”

National Post

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